


Leaves Lost

by Self_san



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: All-Grown-Up, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Faerie Courts and Politics, Like Father like Daughter, Summer Court, Winter Court
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:52:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 17,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Self_san/pseuds/Self_san
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Splash Red-<br/>a rush of autumn leaves that<br/>bled away their beauty as they<br/>died upon the breeze.</p><p>Frost.<br/>Leaves lost."</p><p>~Mark R. Slaughter</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a day so long in coming

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Snow Days](https://archiveofourown.org/works/238789) by [beachkid (binz)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/beachkid), [binz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/binz/pseuds/binz), [shiplizard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiplizard/pseuds/shiplizard). 



> Inspired by 'Snow Days' by beachkid (binz), binz, shiplizard.

“Oi! Mendoza!”

When I heard the familiar voice of Officer Rossi yelling, I almost, _almost_ kept walking. Did I know that it was useless? Yes. Did I really care? No.

The reason I would keep walking? Because the good Officer Rossi brought me _nothing_ but trouble.

Mario Rossi was someone I might stretch to call a “friend” of mine. A boisterous young man in blue, the Italian was about 5’5 with wide, dark eyes and sported a slicked-back-do that left his ears sticking out from his head. He was always smiling, especially around me, and a few years ago he had been the one to pull me out of a…not so great foster home. In return, I had saved his ass from a troll who dwelled under a bridge in Central Park.

We had a give and take relationship, did the good officer and me. And since that day in the park, me standing over his prone body, out of breath, my knuckles bloody under lengths of iron chain, my hair sticking to my neck and cheeks with sweat, he had always come to me when something didn’t smell right at a crime-scene. Most of the time, it was something… _preternatural_.

And preternatural was just my area of expertise.

I heard the squad car pull up behind me, and knew that I had nowhere to go--God Bless the fine officers of the NYPD. God Bless.

They were like ravenous fucking wolves with a fresh hunk of deer, I swore, scuffling my toes in my worn-out chucks.

I stopped and deliberately ducked into the nearby alleyway. From just a glance, I could see that the streets had _miraculously_ cleared, leaving only suspicious eyes peering out of the storefronts. Each pair was as dark as night and just as disapproving.

I saw Mrs. Franko from the corner store scowling, her old hands tightening on the length of broom she held, and seriously considered that she might come over, as Rossi and his partner, Wu, rounded the corner.

An Italian and a Asian walk into an alleyway to meet with a Latina. It sounded like the opening of a bad joke, but, what can you do.

My _life_.

Wu was someone that Rossi had found and buddied up with in the Police Academy. Wu was a good man and, being nearly six-foot tall, he towered over me _and_ Rossi.

But he was a gentle man, for all he rarely smiled, and he had a fondness for Broadway and Showtunes that I shared with him. Also, from what I could tell, his grandmother was a witch, back in the small province in China where she had been born and raised, before she came to America. Now, she ran the finest drycleaner on this side of the Big Apple. People _swore_ by her winters, and I could believe it, for all that I had absolutely _nothing_ that needed that kind of cleaning. She had raised Wu, here in New York, and the man had been not surprised _at_ _all_ to happen upon me and Rossi, bloody in the park, a moaning troll huddled feet away.

My bags bit into my arm through my thin coat, and I shifted one to sit on my hip like a child. There was no way in hell that I was putting my groceries on the ground. This was an alleyway, after all. I pulled the move like I was checking my watch, a false pretense that anyone on the street knew was faked.

My breath fogged the air, and I buried my nose in my scarf as the boys stopped. Winter had come to New York hard this year, and while I was glad for the reprieve from the scalding heat, I almost wished the cold would go away so that I didn’t have to worry so much about the kids I knew that lived out in it.

Me? Now, I was a lucky one. Sure, I had dropped out of school, but that was so that I could work full-time. And it wasn’t like they had anything else to teach me, anyway. I had an apartment, crappy though it was, and I could afford to eat and sometimes shop at my local thrift stores. I could do laundry and I could afford to pay my heating bill. I wasn’t a prostitute or a junkie.

For me, life was looking up.

“Shouldn’t you be in school, Mendoza?” Rossi started off, his wide mouth pulling into a grin. It was a familiar dance.

“Shouldn’t you be riding a desk, Rossi?” I asked, rolling my eyes at him.

Beside him, Wu opened his thick coat to pull out a file folder.

My breath caught in my throat, pin-pricks of ice dancing up my spin, setting my teeth on edge. I swallowed carefully.

So much for this being a social visit.

And, actually, to be more realistic, my stomach dropped somewhere along the subway tracks.

Still.

Immediately, I looked closer at the men standing before me, and noticed that they looked _exhausted_. Rossi’s usually slicked-back hair was falling into his eyes, and Wu’s normally pin-neat uniform was creased. Their eyes were bloodshot, and the grin that Rossi wore was strained.

They looked desperate.

I wordlessly handed one of my bags to Rossi, and took the offered file that Wu held out.

I flicked through the pages, and felt sick to my stomach even as I could feel my face smooth into bland nothingness.

Two bodies, Caucasians, man and woman. Both looked to have been brutally tortured before their throats were slit. And was that--I squinted, peering into the background of the picture.

Shit, I cursed. It was Central Park, alright.

The bodies both lay, lifeless and still, their eyes mercifully shut, in patches of frosty grass. Both were naked, their arms and legs tied together.

Their faces were untouched. They looked almost… _peaceful_ , if that was all that you were looking at. And, well, and if you ignored the tear tracks and their blood-crusted hair.

I flipped back a few pages, read the short bios each had.

“So, no connection?” I asked to the air, my voice smooth and low.

The woman had been an elementary school teacher. The man, a tax-accountant. They didn’t look anything alike. One was blond, the other brunette, one had brown eyes, the other blue.

“Between vics?” Rossi asked, his voice tired. “Nah. Both came from different areas of the city. They didn’t know each other, they shopped at different stores and ran with different crowds. Hell, their second-cousins-twice-removed don’t know each other. There is _nothing_ connecting these two people!” He jammed his finger at the file, sounding angry. Angry, and defeated.

The deaths were spaced about three days apart and the last one had happened a day ago.

“There’s always a connection Rossi,” I said, distractedly, looking at the pictures again. No marks to say that it was ritualistic, no candles or special marks or _anything_ to say that this was in…my… _area_. So why had Rossi brought me it?

Normally, I could trust Rossi to bring me something, well, _relevant_ to the things I knew. He had a nose for the supernatural like a _bloodhound_. But this?

Finally, I shut the folder, tucking it under my arm.

“So, what did you expect me to see, Rossi?” I asked carefully, trying not to step on his toes about it. Why had they brought me the file of such a high-profile, seemingly active, investigation?

Rossi ran a hand through his hair and Wu let out a big breath, his shoulders deflating. Shit, I stared, surprised. They had _really_ wanted me to have something.

“Hell, I don’t know Mendoza! We’re grasping at straws here. Couldn’t you--” he wiggled his fingers at me.

I laughed at his disgruntled expression, trying to bring a touch of normal back to the conversation, still unsettled by their obvious dejection. “What?” I asked, “Wiggle my fingers at the crime scenes?”

Wu pinched the bridge of his nose.

“No! Just…” Rossi sighed, rubbing at his neck. His nose was red from the cold.

I took some pity.

“Well, the murders didn’t take place in that area, right? There wasn’t enough blood for that,” I pointed out, feeling my mind _really_ start to work, to _look_ for the _strings_ and the messy viscera that marked human interaction, human _crime_. “Could it be staging? And if so, why?” The last part, I murmured to myself. I tapped my mouth with the edge of the folder, thinking.

Maybe it had something to do with the place they had been killed originally? New York _was_ rife with ley-lines…

“Let me look some things up, and I’ll get back to you, yeah?” I was already preoccupied with thoughts of the murder, and my fingers positively itched for my crappy laptop, stashed away under my bed, back at my apartment.

Rossi huffed out a puff of air that whited between us like smoke. “Yeah, that’d be great,” he sighed, running another hand through his hair. “You got my number.”

We exchanged the file for my bag of groceries, and Wu tipped his hat to me with a weary hand, then they were gone.

And I had work to do.


	2. where they walk

I walked home after reassuring Mrs. Franko that no, those ‘ _huevos_ ’ hadn’t been bothering me and no, I was fine, _really_.

Mrs. Franko was great, for all that she refused to speak English and was always trying to set me up with her nice, Catholic Nephew. No, I didn’t know his name. No, I didn’t care to. He was a thirty-something orthodontist in the upper-side. And while I was sure he was perfectly nice, I wanted nothing to do with that. At. _All_.

Mrs. Franko also liked to think that since we were both from Guatemala, we had _so_ _much_ in common. This was fine, except for the fact that I barely remembered Guatemala. Hell, I barely remembered _anything_ before my ninth birthday.

After abating her fears, I continued on, my arms starting to ache with the weight of a half-gallon of milk, a box of poptarts, some chips, some mac’n’cheese, and everything else I had bought with this last two-weeks paycheck.

I would be eating like a queen, this next few weeks, oh, _yes_ , I _would_.

…Well, I would as soon as my stomach stopped churning from those crime-scene pictures.

I couldn’t help it--I thought about the bodies the entire way home, all the way up to the third floor of my dilapidated apartment, past the graffiti-strewn walls and over the broken, creaky stairs.

I didn’t bother taking off my coat or turning on any lights--I just put my groceries away, grabbed my bag of books and my laptop, and headed out.

I walked the mile or so to the nearest public library, swiping my card and sharing a smile with old Madam Pierre that ran the front desk, her hair stark white and pulled into an ever-severe bun at the back of her thin neck. Her long, aged hands were pale from a lack of sun and her glasses-chain gleamed from a recent polish.

I held up my bag like a sign when it looked like she would try and speak with me. She let me go, always willing to have me there when I was there to study, something that she held in the highest esteem.

Yeah, she knew that I wasn’t in school. But just because I had dropped didn’t mean that I didn’t still _learn_. She always had a new book for me to take home, and she was always willing to have a discussion about post-impressionistic art in relation to world politics of the time or the determent of the colonial system of Elizabethan England and beyond.

Mostly, I liked her because she knew the value of _silence_.

I went to the far corner, where only a small window close to the ceiling shed the cold light of the late-winter evening in, painting dust motes as they floated over the small table. My space was tucked in behind the stacks of back-logged periodicals and it always smelled like dust, paper-mold, and seeping ink.

I loved it.

Plugging in my computer, I waited for it to start while I unloaded my bag.

Each book was carefully pulled out and set at the edge of the table, their cloth wrappings tucked securely around each respective book. There were about five in total, with varying sizes.

The smallest was the size of my palm and was the journal of a Spanish Conquistador. The thick leather and the fine, pressed parchment of the pages always sent a shot of fear right through my heart--disquieting and somber in its old t-shirt wrapping. I set it aside before the rest, to be buried under the others’ bulk.

I had stolen it from one of my first foster-parent’s library.

It chronicled a _conquistador’_ s arrival to _La Nuevo Mundo_ and the things he had found there. Mostly, it was about his enthrallment with a creature native to the hot, dense forests of the Aztec Peninsula. And it was something that featured most frequently in my darkest of terrors and inhabited the gray dredges of my memories like a sleeping specter. _Vampires_.

I ignored it with long practice, pulling out the last book of the bunch.

The largest, it was a Germanic tomb with an actual _wooden_ cover. It was a book of old faerie tales, and it was a beautiful piece that was detailed like an illuminated manuscript, with colorful pages and looping, decorative font. It was the life’s-work of a Gothic Monk, and I had given $2 for it at a summer flea market when I was fourteen.

The proprietor had been an insomniac that looked more _junkie_ than anything else. He had obviously been desperate to get rid of the book, and I had happily taken it off his hands. It was one of the most valuable things I owned, and I would probably be willing to protect it with my nails and teeth if it came down to it.

Not that it likely _would_ , mind, just that I was _willing_.

It was also incredible useful, and it was _that_ that I turned to first, something niggling in the back of my skull that I might find something inside.

Now, the magic that I did wasn’t _showy_. It wasn’t big and bold and _colorful_ , but rather, quiet. _Small_. It crept around my hands, came straight from my heart, and had yet to steer me wrong.

I might not have been able to, say, light something on fire with a shouted word, but I _could_ find things that wished to be found, things long lost and thought forgotten, could hear the whispers of the wind through the streets and know what it said, and could feel the souls of old houses, so stalwart and solid where they rotted into the skin of New York.

I could listen to the cry of the gulls and feel the turning of the earth inside my head, and I _was_ powerful, in my own way.

I worked some of that power then, like I always did with my old books, and I closed my eyes, _thought_ about what I wanted to know, and cracked the pages, carefully spreading it out on the table.

My breath caught in my throat at the full page of blue-ink and white velum, smirking faces and contorted limbs reaching out into the snowy landscape of the drawing.

**_Fee von Winter_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huevos- Spanish. Slang for penises, or dicks.  
> Conquistador- Spanish. Explorer sent from Spain to explore the New World that Columbus had found.  
> La Nuevo Mundo- Spanish. Literally, The New World.  
> Fee von Winter- German. Literally, Fae of Winter.
> 
> *I'm not actually Spanish or German, the German is courtesy of Google and the Spanish, from what I took in highschool.


	3. thickening

I blinked, bleary-eyed and exhausted, hours later, the pale yellow lamp-light burning my eyes and making me cringe.

I stretched where I sat, feeling my back pop and crack, and groaned, hiding a yawn in my hand.

I glanced at my watch and winced to see that it was already nearly ten. _Shit_ , I thought, I hadn’t meant to stay so late.

“Maggie, are you still here?” Madam Pierre called out, her voice calm and low as she came around the corner of the bookshelves and to my spot.

My hand was cramped from clenching around my ball-point pen, the side of my palm dark with ink where I hadn’t waited for my notes to dry.

I gave her a tired grin, rueful. “Yeah, I was just finishing up,” I explained, biting back another yawn.

Around me was a mess of lined-paper covered in my cramped, scrawling writing, each page numbered carefully. A _German to English Translator_ blinked on my computer screen, waiting to be used again, and the book I had been translating sat on the far side from where I had been looking and typing.

In five hours, I had done nearly the entire section on Winter Fae. I _still_ didn’t know what they had to do with the crimes that Rossi and Wu were having me look into, but I was willing to follow my gut on it, and had carefully annotated each passage on a separate page with my thoughts and any questions I might have.

I closed down my computer and gathered up the loose pages from where I had jotted down the German roughly into something resembling English, though I wouldn’t bet my life on some of the passages I had copied over.

I had been working on learning German for a few years, ever since I had gotten the tomb, but I wasn’t nearly fluent in the writing, let alone trying to _speak_ it.

Also, not many dictionaries had _archaic_ German translation. Madam Pierre had ordered me one, special, from a library in Upstate.

I had photo-copied the entire thing, front to back, after I had gotten one of my paychecks and now I highlighted and took notes on the clear page-covers to my little heart’s content. It was opened, hole-punched into a cheap plastic binder at my side.

I closed it, tucking the pages I had been writing on into a spare folder, and started wrapping up the tomb to go back into my bag. It went into an old, soft dishtowel, the weave worn with age and gentle on the wooden bindings.

Madam Pierre gave me a smile, offering a steaming cup of _something_ that smelled like coffee.

“Thanks,” I said gratefully, taking the small teacup into my grasp delicately, the bone-colored China brittle in my hands.

The coffee was as pale as my skin, a milky, light brown, thick with cream and no sugar, and I drank it quickly like it was an espresso shot, the liquid burning down my throat and into my stomach.

The warmth instantly spread throughout my chest, down my arms and into my frozen fingers.

Madam Pierre had probably added a touch of whiskey to the pot, I figured, almost purring at the feeling, flexing my fingers and toes.

The library was warm enough, true, but I had always gotten cold easily, and had only taken my coat off, leaving my hoodie and scarf on while I worked.

I took the last mouthful, then handed her the cup back, shrugging into my jacket. She leaned against the wall beside the magazines, still smiling fondly, watching as I packed up.

My messenger bag was an old canvas thing, threadbare and held together with heavy-duty yarn stitches, duct tape, and sheer mule-headedness. Everything fit inside carefully, folders and books and the little bag of pens, highlighters, pencils, and whiteout that I had. It was heavy, yes, but it _worked_.

I also still had room for the two lengths of iron chain that I carried around, along with a can of bear mace and a switchblade; all in the front pocket, unzipped and ready for me to grab at any moment.

The small first-aide kit fit into my coat pocket, freeing up some of the room.

I took a second to rub the sleep out of my eyes, unplugging my computer and tucking the cord into a free pocket. I pushed in my chair and flicked off the lamp, following Madam Pierre up to the front counter. I tightened my scarf around my neck, pulling it up around my nose and mouth to block some of the wind and turned up my sweater hood from under my coat.

“Have a good night, Maggie,” she bid me goodnight as I stepped outside with a smile and a wave, locking up behind me. She lived above the library, so I didn’t have to worry about her getting home okay.

I turned up my coat collar, shifting my hold on the laptop under my arm and my bag across my chest, and took off.

It was time to head home--I had work in a few hours.


	4. in the dark of the night

That night, I dreamed of vampires.

Not unusual, per say, but still… _frightening_ all the same.

Waking in a cold, clammy sweat, shaking and dry-heaving with fear, adrenaline sending jerking shocks all down my limbs, I panted, sobbing without tears, tangled in my sheets.

When I calmed down enough to just be drooling, openmouthed into my pillow, the blankets snatched up over my head like they would protect me from the darkness, I rolled trembling out of bed and turned on all of the lights in my apartment.

Each UV florescent buzzed and hummed, driving my electric bill up even as I thought about it. But they drove away the shadows from each and every corner, illuminating the entirety of my apartment in stark, vivid light.

My bed was three mattresses stacked on the floor in the corner, or I would have been on my knees checking under them, too, like I did with my couch.

The lengths of salt beneath each of my windows, the small ones in the bathroom and kitchen and the large one in the main space, were undisturbed when I checked to make sure the towels I had pinned in parody of curtains were still securely held down. My door was locked, all four bolts.

Still trembling, my teeth clacking together, I made myself sit on my couch and hold my hands on my knees, taking the deepest breaths I could, holding them, and then letting them out. My breath shook from between my lips, my eyes burned, and I covered my mouth with a hand to hold in a howl of _anger_ and _fear_ and _loathing_ , clenching my eyes shut.

The rumble of my heater was blotted out by the racing of my heart.

God dammit. God _fucking_ dammit.

I pried open my eyes, made myself look around to see that there was _nothing_ in my apartment but me.

My apartment was small, being all I could afford on a waitresses salary, and was really just one big room except for the bathroom. (More of a broom-closet, with its small sink, toilet, and Spartan shower stall all cramped together. But it worked well enough.) There was a small kitchen, the living room just big enough for my old couch and heater and a screen that separated the room from the three twin mattresses I had piled in the corner, right beside the set of second-hand drawers.

The linoleum floors were cracked in the kitchen and bathroom, and the carpet was stained and thin, the single window leading out to the fire escape constantly let in the cold and the small one above the kitchen sink was painted closed, but it was clean and comfortable and _mine_. And I had worked _hard_ to get it and keep it and _nothing_ could make me afraid if I didn’t let it.

Nervously, I licked my lips, swallowing dryly. My face felt bloodless, and my knuckles were white, fisted in the flannel of my sleeping pants.

I was okay. I _was_ okay.

I made myself relax back into the couch, and pulled an old blanket from the back onto my lap and up around my shoulders. The heater was sending out warm waves of heat a few feet in front of me, and I wiggled my toes in my knobby socks, trying to get warm.

I was still shaking, and I could feel the trembles all the way down to my bones, but I was…I _would_ _be_ okay.

It was just a dream.

Thoughtlessly, I reached for my sketchbook, tucked under the middle cushion of the couch, beneath the cracked, worn leather, and flipped it open to a new page, pulling the markers attached to the metal spiral off and uncapping one with my teeth.

Black, black ink spread across the page, seeping like blood as my hand jerked left and right--rough, jagged lines. Shadows. Reaching, clawed hands.

It was mindless, soothing, something that one of my first psychologists had taught me to do in a little office in the Bronx that had smelled of vanilla and carbonated soda.

Put it down, get it out

was the motto.

It was, obviously, effective enough that I still used it, years later.

I scribbled another form and then switched markers, letting the red fling across the page in drops and dabs and making bloody, sightless eye sockets.

I stopped when the page was a mess of black and red, sharp, jagged edges and messy shading stretching across deformed, bat-like faces. Under, around, atop a slab of darkness where a prone figure lay, the only spot of pure white left, though the red still painted along the ends of lax fingers and poured from an open mouth, spilling down like a bib.

When I was younger, I witnessed a horror of…of _darkness_ and _death_ and _despair_. I didn’t really remember it. I didn’t think I ever _really_ would. I probably didn’t _want_ to. All I knew was that it had wiped clean the years leading up to my tenth birthday, leaving nothing but a hollowed out shell where a childhood was supposed to be. Whatever had happened, it had left me with an abiding weariness of the dark, a fear of being bound, and a mismatched patch of nightmares that had me waking up in panicked attacks that had then left me sleepless for days.

I think, whatever it was, was the reason I had never known my parents. One of the first, clearest memories I had was of being held in Father Gregor’s arms in _Our Lady of Guadalupe_ , cold and wrapped in a patchwork blanket.

I had had a piece of paper pinned to the blanket, like I was a baby, that said simply, _Margaret Angelica Mendoza_. No mention of any family had ever been found, by Church inquiry or public records. From Father Gregor and the care of the nuns, I had gone through a series of foster homes. Some had been nice. Some had been…not so nice.

The system wasn’t a kind place, and I knew that better than most.

Five years could seem like an eternity.

But each and every single family had _never_ been able to handle the fact that, more often than not, I woke screaming, inconsolably scared witless. I was just the little Mexican girl who drew the disturbing pictures, graduating from crayon to pencil to marker and psychologist to psychologist to psychiatrist. Drugs and drugs and more treatment, all until I had finally succeeded in running away and then applying for emancipation.

Now?

_Now,_ I had more than twenty sketchbooks, tracing the evolution of my drawing from wobbly, fanged faces to distorted, genuinely forbidding figures with crooked limbs and distended stomachs, leathery faces stretched in bloody grins.

This was just the latest.

Luckily, the night terrors had waned, and now I only had them once or twice every few months.

Lucky me. 

I looked down when my hand ran out of room. They had steadied, thankfully.

I snapped the book closed without paying any _more_ attention to what I had drawn and capped the markers, reattaching them and shoving the whole thing under the cushion again. Out of sight, out of mind.

Out of sight, out of mind…

Yeah, _right_.


	5. turning up daisies

After the nightmare, _surprise_ _surprise_ , I didn’t go back to sleep. Instead, I pulled open a search engine and looked up the two victims.

Their faces, alive and smiling, were in just about every newspaper obituary across the city, though both were regaled to the second or third page of each online “spread.”

They looked like happy people, really.

_So why had they died?_

I frowned, and set about digging a little deeper, grabbing a bottle of soda and a poptart from the fridge before I got to work.

I searched and snacked, though I wasn’t hungry, and hit all of the online crazy-rags about mothers in Brooklyn getting knocked up by yetis/aliens/JFK dressed like Elvis, or whatever.

Because you never knew. Some of the rags got closer to the truth than the _Times_.

This time though, they didn’t turn anything up.

Luckily, I had a… _friend of a friend_ …who had set me up with doors into the government works, everything from electrical bills to credit history, I had at my fingertips with just a name.

That, and Ancestry.com.

From the hack, I had the names of the parents and grandparents of each victim, and I typed them in, exhaustion pulling at my eyes even as I covered a yawn.

Most of faerie is ageless, but I _had_ been led to Winter Fae last night. I was starting to wonder if, _maybe_ , the victims might have been indebted to a Noble of Winter or something.

Hey, it was plausible! Faeries didn’t _always_ eat their humans or just, you know, _disappear_ them.

Maybe this one had a taste for human torture.

But I was getting ahead of myself.

Daylight was starting to peek in through the towels over the window, and I checked my watch to see that I only had a hour or so before I needed to be at work. The lineage trees were being mapped before my eyes, slow pixels coming together to form the looping lines and little green leafs across the page. I switched between windows, looking from the man’s to the woman’s.

Huh. Both their great-great-grandmothers had come through Elis Island around the same time.

Magda Grenninger nee Klein

and _Sophia Rushman nee Klein._

The links had pictures, taken during the identification processes of the Elis Island Immigration Office, and I clicked on each. _Klein_ was a common German surname, but maybe…

And…they looked nothing like each other, dammit. I groaned in frustration, huffing out a breath, moving to close the links angrily.

Then I saw that there was another leaf at the bottom of each page.

I absently clicked on one, and it brought me to an old family portrait, sepia and worn around the edges.

And there they were, Magda and Sophia, standing side-by-side with another woman.

I blinked.

I gaped.

No… _way_ …

I sat back, shocked, incredulous and then froze.

I squinted, zooming in on the picture.

There were pendants, _broken_ _pendants_ , hanging around each woman’s neck.

I tilted my head, and felt my heart stop.

Put together, they would form a _snowflake._

And _snowflakes?_

Snowflakes were the emblems of _Winter_.


	6. bringing to the blue

“Rossi! _Rossi_ , wake the hell up you lazy bastard!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, half-laughing, pounding on the door to Rossi’s apartment.

It was in the better part of town from mine, but was still poor enough that the door _wasn’t_ reinforced. If Rossi was home, he would hear me.

God, please let him be home, I _so_ didn’t want to have to go to the Police Department, just to find him.

I rubbed at my eyes with one hand, sniffling from the cold, and scuffed my boots along the fake hardwood floor, the lengths slightly sticky with age. I glanced around the hallway. No one had peeked out of their doors at the racket I was making, so they were probably used to Rossi having screaming visitors.

The thought almost made me laugh. Rossi, _lady’s man extreme._

I swallowed the laugh and the yawn that wanted to sneak out, scratching along my head with numb fingers.

I was sleep ruffled and freezing, having forgotten my coat on my rush out of my apartment, and my face and hands were burning, feeling frostbitten. I shoved my hands under my arms, buried my nose in the scarf I had wrapped around my neck haphazardly.

I heard movement from inside, low cursing in what sounded like Italian, and then the door was wrenched open.

Rossi stood there in a pair of boxers and a thin white t-shirt, squinting into the light of the hallway. His holey socks were bunched around his calves and his legs were as pale as milk, peeking out. He scrubbed at his face when he saw me and groaned. Fresh stubble dotted around his jaw and mouth.

“Mendoza? What the--” he growled, his voice sleep-rough and tired, his dark eyes squinting at me from under his fringe of raven hair.

I was practically vibrating in my spot, and reached under my sweater to pull out the colorful folder I had shoved all of my findings in.

I shoved it at him, and he took it without pause, stepping back and motioning me in without saying anything.

Smart man. I was glad that he had remembered what I had told him when I first explained…well, what was what.

Never give a verbal invite. _Never_.

Yawning widely, he scratched at his stomach, shouldering the door shut behind me and flicking the locks.

I blew hot air onto my hands, rubbing them briskly. I thought about toeing out of my boots, but didn’t bother, just loitered around the kitchen doorway while Rossi opened the folder and spread it out across his kitchen table.

The table was an old mahogany _monster_ , scratched and worn and covered with other files, and I could practically _feel_ the history coming off of it.

It was, really, strange to see.

I used an _ironing_ _board_ as my table, when I needed one. But this? This thing was old, and had been _loved_.

I leaned against the doorway, resting my head on the refrigerator that hummed beside me, and watched with half-masted eyes as Rossi quickly flicked through the pages.

His apartment was warm, and smelled like the aftershave that he used, his hair pomade and something that was simply _Rossi_. I started to thaw, shaking off the snow that had gathered along my shoulder and was starting to melt in my hair where it fell around my face. I brushed some behind my ear and knew when Rossi had gotten to the pictures.

“Is this…” as a cop, Rossi could wake up almost as fast as I could, being a foster-kid, and his voice was smoother, something closer to what it was day to day when he slowly turned to look at me.

I shrugged, and hid a proud smile.

“It is what it is,” I said.

Rossi groaned and ran a hand over his hair.

“The great-great-grandmothers? How the _hell_ did we miss that?” he asked angrily, slamming the pictures onto the table with a sharp smack.

I watched him carefully, but it looked like he was more pissed at himself than anything else.

Before I had left my apartment, I had plugged my laptop into my old printer, a dinosaur of a thing with ink-needles that you could actually _see_ going across the page, and had printed out all of the pages I had found, along with the pictures.

It was these that Rossi was re-shuffling through, peering at them closely.

I had captioned them with the names and maiden names of the two women that I knew, leaving only the third blank.

The third blank woman, whose descendant was now in danger.

Because I would bet nearly _anything,_ that they?

 _They_ were the next victim.


	7. diner for three

“So, explain this to me again,” Rossi said, his big hands wrapped around his coffee mug. Beside him, Wu was blowing on his piping hot tea.

I sighed, and rested my face on my hands, my eyes burning and my hair falling out of its updo around my cheeks.

Around me, the Diner was bustling, the old regulars in their corner arguing in Spanish, the families around the middle fighting with their screaming children, and the solitary figures at the bar huddled over their meals and inhaling coffee like they were about to die.

Me and the good officers were in one of the old booths lining the windows. Like the others, the vinyl seats were cracking and the stick-on Formica was peeling up along the corners of the table. But it was clean, and no ones feet stuck to the floor when they walked, thank you very much.

The walls were a warm rose, stucco, and there were little fake cactuses in every window. Sombreros hung on the walls, along with patterned shawls. The beams were terracotta colored, and there were little coloring pages with piñatas for the kids who came in.

The food was good, and cheap, and traditional Spanish fare along with American. I had worked here since I was thirteen, as a busboy, and now as a waitress.

It was my morning break, and I was so tired I was almost slap-happy.

After going to Rossi’s apartment at the brink of dawn, I had had to hotfoot it straight to work. Rossi had been getting dressed, and had said that he would snag Wu and be over to speak to me further about what I had turned up.

Luckily, I had had a change of clothing in the back room of the Diner, and had been able to shimmy into the white-oxford and sling the apron around my waist and my hair into a clip before clocking in and opening up.

By now, my sleeves had been rolled up and my hair had started to muse, frizzy, and I was so tired I could rest my head on the _fryer_ , but other than that I was _golden_.

“Okay, so, let me bullet point this for you. _One_ , the Fae of Winter have something to do with this,” I held up a hand to stall Rossi’s open mouth, “No, I don’t know how _specifically_ yet. I’m working on general knowledge right now.”

He closed his mouth and motioned me to continue.

“ _Second_ , the victims are related by way of their great-great-grandmothers. From what I can gather, after reaching the States the grannies split, marrying into different families and living their lives without any further contact to the family they may have had in the motherland. _Third_ , each of the grannies had part of the Emblem of Winter hanging around their necks in _that_ picture,” I pointed to the one under Wu’s arm.

Obliging my finger, he lifted his arm, looking down to where I was gesturing to.

Some of my old slang was thickening my voice, and I was starting to sound like a _real_ Latina.

Ugh, I was tired.

I ran my hands over my face, brisk, trying to push away the exhaustion. God, you would think I had never gone a few hours without sleep, the way I was acting.

“For those of us who don’t know what the heck an ‘ _Emblem of Winter_ ’ is?” Rossi asked sarcastically, aggressively adding another packet of Splenda to his coffee and grimacing as he took a sip.

I was tempted to tell him that _nothing_ would help the shit we called coffee here. The Spanish were _very_ particular about what _real_ coffee was. Tuned to the Average American taste buds, it was not.

I called it _Rocket Fuel_ , privately and in the sanctity of my mind.

I sighed. “The snowflake necklaces, Rossi? Ringing any bells?”

He blinked. “Those ugly things?” He was scowling.

I stared at him. “ _Fourthly_ , they _were_ not _ugly_.” I ignored his scoff.

“ _Fifthly_ , I’m guessing that the grannies passed down those markers, all the way down to the victims themselves.”

Wu was nodding thoughtfully, and was taking notes with one hand in his little notebook.

But Rossi was frowning.

“You think these people were killed over _necklaces_ , Mendoza?” he leaned over, hissing. Incredulous.

 _Patience,_ I reminded myself with gritted teeth, when all I wanted to do was smash him over the head with the ceramic _sombrero_ that was on each table.

“They are not just _necklaces_ , Rossi. They are the _Emblems of Winter_. They _mean_ that Winter has a debt that has yet to be repaid. Faeries take that kind of shit _very_ seriously.”

“People are getting killed for a faerie IOU?” Wu asked calmly, cutting off anything further.

I opened my mouth…and closed it.

“Yes. That’s it _exactly_.” I inched my hand away from the _sombrero_.

“But it’s not _really_ like that.” I waved my hands and tried to explain. “It’s more like, okay, there are three letters, an _I_ , an _O_ , and a _U_. All put together they make…”

“An IOU,” Rossi was nodding, and Wu’s pen had stilled.

I gave him a smile, glad that he was starting to get it. “ _Right_. Now, imagine that this IOU is _centuries_ old, just gathering interest, and has since been divided into three parts and given to three _separate_ _people_. Alone, the letters are just letters, right? But _together_ \--”

“They form a note that you can cash in!” Rossi exclaimed.

“Yes!” Thank God, he finally got it. “That’s it _exactly_! Now, someone is trying to _get_ the note, but so far, all they have are _two_ of the letters.”

“And all they need is the third.”


	8. what is to come

Rossi and Wu left after paying for their coffee and tea, Wu flipping shut his little battered notebook and Rossi cringing through his last dredge of drink.

They were going to spin a tale to their boss about a priceless necklace and a crazed collector and the German nobility; I wasn’t really sure about the details, and didn’t really care. I just hoped that they _found_ the other person, before they ended up like their distant relatives.

There was a hundred dollar bill tucked under the ceramic _sombrero_ , with a note saying ‘ _more to come’_ in Wu’s neat English.

It meant that once they filed their CI paperwork I would get the rest of my fee. All two-hundred-dollars worth of it.

It sent a thrill down my spine as I folded the bill and tucked it into my sports bra.

I wiped down the table, and got back to work, covering a yawn with the back of my hand.

The rest of the day, long and grueling and _painful_ , was spent chattering in Spanish to the other waitresses and the cook, listening to _Enrique_ _Iglesias_ on the radio because the others had _no_ taste, and serving mug after mug of Rocket Fuel.

If I had known then what I would know later, I would have skived off of work. Gone to the park, built a snowman, visited the Church and prayed some, bought a cup of that really great coco from the vendor down the road.

But I _didn’t_ know, so I didn’t _do_ any of that.

Instead, I died.


	9. first sight

My death, though I didn’t know it then, started with a frantic call to the Diner from a girl named Sophia.

Sophia and I, we had shared a foster home for a few months, years ago, when Sophia was a tiny wisp of a girl with long, platinum blonde hair and bright grey eyes. She had been tall and thin and model pretty and our foster father had raped her every night in the bed beside mine.

These days, she was still pretty, but was so thin that I could see her veins, blue and purple and deep deep red, pulsing under her pale flesh. Her bones were like a birds, delicate and small, and while her hair was still long, it was like spidersilk and lay constantly tangled around her shoulders, shadowing her wide, wide eyes. She now lived in a tree in Central Park and spent her time either talking to said tree, collecting shiny things that people had dropped, or singing to herself. She ate dandelions and sipped “tea” from acorn caps. I visited her every week, and made sure she always had a big bottle of clean water and at least one blanket.

I had tried to get her help, before, before I had realized that, for all her damage, she could be one of the sanest people I had ever met.

She knew how to take care of herself. She just chose not to.

She also carried a porcelain knife as thick as her thumb, and had no problems using it.

I tried not to worry too much for her, and religiously wrote my phone number and that of my work on her forearm each time I visited, just in case.

She had never called before now.

Reba, one of the older waitresses, frantically waved me over with her long, bright red fingernails, her dark eyes wide under a coat of shimmering gold eyeshadow.

I took the heavy handheld carefully, holding it to my ear.

“ _Maggie_?” Sophia asked, breathy and girlish and soft.

“Sophia?” Surprised, I ducked into the back of the Diner, holding the phone to my ear with a shoulder.

I could barely hear her, her voice was so soft.

“Sophia are you okay? Sophia?” I asked quickly.

“ _Yes_ ,” she sighed. I could hear the rumble of traffic and the screaming of taxi horns in the background.

“ _There was a light, Maggie, a bright bright_ light _. She’s dead now, and they’ve taken him, Maggie, they’ve taken the King. Bound with leather and_ iron _, they just…_ picked him up _and_ drove away _. His sitter is still here, though, Maggie. You should come and talk to it_ ,” Sophia giggled, half-panting over the phone.

I struggled to work out what she had just said.

“Sophia, is someone hurt? Do you need help?” I decided to focus on that, feeling panic curl around my stomach.

“ _Mag-gie_ ,” she said, sounding aggrieved. “ _The_ KING _Maggie, the King!”_ her voice was still soft, but she stressed the titles.

“The…King of the Park? Sofia, I don’t understand, what are you _talking_ about?” Frustrated, I pulled at a piece of loose hair, frowning.

“ _Will you come, Maggie? You should…come…_ ” I heard her voice start to fade away, like she was getting further from the phone.

“Sophia? Sophia!” I yelled, but only heard the payphone, clattering against the booth, then the dial tone as the money ran out.

“Shit!” I half-screamed, furiously clicking the phone off and grabbing my sweater off of the rack, pulling my regular t-shirt over my button up and undershirt, then the sweater on top of that. I ripped off my apron and slung it over the hook, looping my scarf around my throat.

I hadn’t taken my bag to Rossi’s, earlier in the morning, so I didn’t have it now, and had forgotten my coat, for which I was cursing myself even _more_ heavily for.

All I had was my wallet, my keys, and my switchblade in my pants pockets, along with my can of bear mace and my two lengths of chain in my sweater pocket.

I pulled my hood up and practically ran out the door, tossing the phone to Reba with a quick, “Cover me!”

She waved me away with a worried, “Be careful, _chica_!”

It was four in the afternoon, and because it was midwinter, it was already starting to go dark, leaving only the sulfuric orange glow of the streetlights overhead as I hopped onto the nearest train and let it take me to the Central Park exit.

It was expensive, and I couldn’t really afford it, but it was _Sophia_.

Sophia, thin, pretty Sophia. Insane girl trapped in an unfamiliar body, who always smiled at me and always had a leaf or a flower or a shiny bead to press into my pockets.

Sophia, who had taken a pedophile’s attention solely onto herself because she was _older_ and _she could take it, Maggie, really she could._ Who had held me every night after he had left, after I had buried my sobs into my pillow, who had petted my head and sang to me.

Sophia, who now sang only to herself and to things I couldn’t see.

I didn’t even think about spending the money, instead, I worried about what she had been trying to say to me the entire ride, solidly _not_ thinking about the press of hot bodies all around me, caging me in like bars of flesh and bone and sinew and _fat_ , who were all sucking up my _air_ \--

I stumbled off gratefully at my stop, gasping, and jogged up the few flights of stairs, back into the freezing evening.

From there, it was a brisk ten minute walk through Central Park to the area where Sophia most enjoyed staying.

My boots crunched through the snow as I passed kissing couples, bright Christmas-light-covered bushes and ponds frozen over for the year. My breath fogged the air before my face, and I almost didn’t see Sophia where she stood against the tree line, her long arms wound around a thin trunk.

She cleared her voice, a high, chiming noise, and I spun, surprised, my heart suddenly racing.

She giggled, blinking her long, pale eyelashes.

She was a study in pale, subtle white, blending into the snow and the ice covered landscape.

“Sophia,” I breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t look hurt, wasn’t limping or crying or bloody.

She wiggled her fingers at me in hello, and turned on her heel, as graceful as a ballerina, skipping away.

“Hey, wait!” I called at her back, breaking into a jog to keep up, my boots sinking into snowdrifts that Sophia seemed to freaking _float_ over, soaking my jeans up around my calves.

I swore, trudging after her as fast as I could, as she led me deeper into the park.

I took note of my surroundings as we went, trying to memorize certain trees so that I could find my way back to the path if I needed to.

But mostly I just tried to keep the swishing of her silk-pale hair in my view, grumbling around the freezing snow, pumping my arms briskly, my nose going numb and my scarf getting wet from the heat of my breath.

I could have given _ten_ Hail-Mary’s when Sophia stopped at a low, stone bridge, the small dip beneath it bitten into the ground by a since-dried stream. It was, nearly, undistinguishable from the rest of the ground. I half-fell into it, biting back a curse and trying not to break my ankle, catching myself on my bare hands.

I yelped, and started to struggle back up when I saw it.

A line of bright, vivid red snaking through the white, under the bridge and up the other side to a high bank.

I felt my stomach drop as I carefully touched a finger to the line, so sharp it could have been drawn with a marker, and held my hand up to the slowly fading light.

My fingers glistened wetly, though I couldn’t really feel them.

It was blood.


	10. first meetings

There was a little girl lying in the snow in a pool of blood, her pale purple coat still bubbled around her little arms and over her little round belly.

Her throat was slit, blood spattering onto her pale chin and clotting in the fur-line around her hood. Her hat, a little pink sock-cap with a pompom on top, was askew, letting loose her light brown curls.

She had little golden studs in her ears, and her mouth was open, showing her gaping front teeth.

One of her boots was untied, and her little mittens were coming off of her tiny hands.

I stared at her, standing in the snow, her blood freezing on my fingers and felt the cold so deep inside that I wondered if my heart was still beating.

But wait, yes, it was, because it was trying to _break_.

The little girl was spread out, like she was making a snow angel, and any of the tracks that might have been there looked to have been wiped away with a stick or a leafy bough.

But she wasn’t making a snow angel, because she was dead. Had probably been dead for _hours_.

I swallowed around my tight throat, turning my face to the sky, trying not to cry. 

Sophia had led me to the third and final victim.

I knew, because there was a burn along her neck, like someone had torn a necklace for her throat.

And God _Dammit_. It was a _child_.

I knew better than to get any closer to the body than I already was, nearly five feet away, but I _wanted_ to. I _wanted_ to fix her little cap and mittens and retie her shoe. I _wanted_ to cover her face and sit with her until the cops came to take her away.

But I didn’t.

Sophia was sitting on the bridge behind me, humming, kicking her heels. I needed to get back out of the park, call Rossi. Call Wu. Call _somebody_.

“Thank you for calling me, Sophia,” I said thickly, turning my back on the dead little girl, resolutely, looking at Sophia instead.

She smiled, sad and dreamy, and gave a low, grave whistle between her teeth, like a mourning dove.

“You should talk to his sitter now, Maggie,” she said softly, knocking her heel against the stone of the bridge.

I stared at her, suddenly so tired I could hardly stand it.

I wanted to go home, take a hot bath, and try to forget about this night.

“What?” I asked blankly, wondering what the hell Sophia was talking about.

She hopped off of the bridge, landing in the snow, and pointed into the shadowy hollow of the crossing.

I slowly leaned down, hoping like hell that there wasn’t anything--

I cursed soundly and silently to myself to see a lumpy shape beneath the bridge, resting in the snow.

I took a step closer as Sophia ducked inside, and gingerly crouched further down, peering into the gloom. There was _no_ _way_ I was getting any closer to _whatever_ the hell it was.

“Sophia,” I said cautiously, but she stopped short of the thing, resting back on her heels and crooking a finger for me to come closer.

I didn’t.

But my eyes did begin to adjust, and I squinted.

Was that…a _basket_?

Why the hell was there a freaking _basket_ under the bridge?

I shuffled closer, pressing my hand against the freezing stone.

The bridge was only about five feet tall, and about the same wide, and there it was; it was an old wicker basket, leaning against the inner curve. It was as tall as the bridge, but narrow, like one of those ones you saw African’s carrying straw on their backs with.

It was wrapped in thick, dull chains.

Iron.

I felt my stomach drop, and I carefully reached out to rap my knuckles against the side of the wood.

The basket suddenly _shaking_ , a sharp series of jerks, something pressing against the side of the wicker, sent me falling back onto my butt in the snow with a high yelp.

Sophia was giggling again, and I cursed, staring wide-eyed at the shivering basket, the chains clinking together loudly in the silence of the early evening.

There was something _inside_ _of_ the basket.

_How_ was this my _life_?

Ass now soaked in freezing snow, I kneeled up, shivering, and shooed Sophia away as my fingers went to the chains binding the basket shut.

It was so, _so_ stupid, but I had to do it. _Had_ to.

My fingers were numb with the cold, so it took a minute for me to find the freaking binder-clip (a _binder_ - _clip_ , really?) holding the links together, but when I did, I took a deep breath, flicked the clip open, and threw myself away as the chains slithered down the basket to pool around the base.

Nothing happened, but my heart was still racing.

Then, the lid began to rise, lifted by a pair of thick, twisted horns, down to a furry head and finally stopping with pair of deep-set, glaring red eyes with goat-like pupils.

“Who _knocks_?” came a raspy, hissing voice, full of glottal sounding consonants. It was the sound of pure belligerence. A long, black tongue flicked out, curling over the side of the wicker, tasting the air and then curling back into the darkness of the basket.

“Who _resides?”_ I snarked back, scowling.

The red eyes narrowed in bone eye sockets.

“Witch-child,” the thing growled, sounding exasperated, and rolled it’s eyes.

I blinked, staring at the basket, uncomprehendingly for a sparse moment until my brain kicked into gear.

What was an agent of winter that was often-times shown carrying a basket or a sack on it’s back, with goat-like features?

_Bingo,_ Maggie Mendoza. You’re a _real_ genius, you **_moron_**.

“No fucking way,” I said flatly.

That was when the shock roared through me.

It _couldn’t_ be.

Like lightening, I turned on Sophia, who was playing with her hair and muttering softly to herself.

“ _Krampus_ , Sophia? _Krampus_?” My voice broke, half-scream and half-hiss. And if the thing in the basket was Krampus and _Krampus_ was the right-hand man to…

My mind raced back to what I had read, to the ornate drawings and looping script of the old faerie tale tomb.

“The King of Winter? You’re telling me the _King_ of freaking _Winter_ got nabbed? Sophia, _Jesus_ _Christ_!” I buried my head in my hands and tried not to scream.

I was shaking, from cold and from fear, and I peered at Sophia through my fingers, moaning.

My hands tugged at my hair, stiff with gathering frost.

“Clever mortal,” Krampus crackled, dark and low, still peering out of his basket at us. His eyes glowed in the low light.

The necklaces hadn’t just been the _Emblem_ of Winter, they had been a stamp of the _Winter_ _King_ _himself_ …that meant…

Oh, my _God_.

Someone had kidnapped _Santa_ _Claus_.


	11. figuring it out

I leaned against the stone wall, opposite of Sophia and…and _Krampus_.

He was still in his basket, peering out of the darkness at me. He didn’t even seem to _see_ Sophia.

I, personally, was trying to reconcile the fact that someone had _kidnapped_ Santa Claus. How the _hell_ had they _done_ _it_?

 _Why_ the hell had they done it?

No, _seriously_.

The Winter King was the second most powerful faerie of Winter, second only to his wife, Mab, _the Queen of Air and Darkness._

Yes, _most_ of the Faerie Court’s powers resided with their Queens; _The Queens Who Are_ , Mab and Tatiana.

Then, came their _husbands_. Nicholas and Oberon, respectively.

Though, it felt… _irreverent_ , sinful, even, to refer to them without titles. Even in my head.

They were the _Kings_ _of_ _Faerie_ , after all. And they had power beyond anything I could think of.

How had one come to be freaking _kidnapped_?

So busy thinking, I didn’t even notice how cold it was getting, how stiff my clothing.

It was then that I realized what _day_ it was. I felt a momentary pang of embarrassment, but it was mostly shadowed by pure, unadulterated _horror_.

It was the day of the _Winter_ _Solstice_. Today, it was the longest day of the year and the day that _Winter relinquished the Table to Summer._

The Stone _Table_ was a Faerie Artifact, older than time itself. And “ _artifact_ ” was a weak word for everything it was.

I had never seen it before, but there _had_ been a drawing of it, in one of my book, a monolithic slab of stone of four pillars, each inscribed with runes, and it held the _power_ of the _seasons_. The power of the _Ages_.

I had first heard of it when I was twelve. When C.S. Lewis had sacrificed Aslan on it.

Now, now it was much, _much_ worse than that.

 _Supposedly,_ it had been the spot where the Mothers of Winter and Summer had given birth to Mab and Tatiana, and where _they_ in turn had had Maeve and Aurora, _the Queens The Will Be_. The _Ladies_ of Winter and Summer.

And the Passover? _It_ _couldn’t_ _happen_ _without the King of Winter._

Oh my _God_ …someone was going to send the world into Summer _for_ _good_. And not _summer_ like a mild winter, no, like, _summer_ as in the _Mesozoic_ _Era_.

Holy _shit_ , this was _Armageddon_. Death by _Faerie_.

We were _so_ screwed.

I…I didn’t know what to _do_. As much as I hated to admit it, as much as I _tried_ to be self-sufficient, and I _was_ , dammit, I _was_ , I couldn’t _call_ _anyone_.

I didn’t _know_ anyone.

I was just a girl that had a few books, a _bit_ of experience. A bit of _magic_.

But I…I would have to do.

Wouldn’t I?

“Figured it out, has she?” Krampus crackled from his basket, mean and utterly cruel. Harsh.

I shivered, so cold that I wasn’t even _really_ _cold_ anymore.

But he was right, I _had_ figured it out.

“Yeah,” I said weakly, my throat tight. “ _Yeah_ , I figured it out.”

Sophia tilted her head at me, and her hair spilled over her shoulders like water.

I took a deep breath and pulled on my big-girl panties, shoving everything aside like it didn’t _matter_ , like I wasn’t _afraid_.

And I _was_ afraid, so, _so_ _scared_ that I could hardly _breathe_.

I wanted, oh, how I wanted more than _anything_ to call the cops, to call Wu or Rossi; give them a heads up about the little girl lying on the snow just a few feet away.

But I couldn’t.

She was dead. She was _dead_ , and she wasn’t going anywhere. She could _wait_.

This, this kidnapping thing? It _couldn’t_ wait.

I took another breath.

“Sophia, do you know where they went, the people that did…this?” I waved my hand, gesturing to Krampus in his basket and the body in the snow.

An unfamiliar grin, wide and shinning, split her face. It creased her eyes and pinked her cheeks, and she nodded vigorously, popping up like a rabbit, to her feet, out of the tunnel and back into the afternoon sun.

“ _Yes_ , I followed them, _off_ they went!” she gestured wildly, practically vibrating were she stood, her hands shaking as she spun in tight circles, around and around as I shuffled out from under the tunnel after her, shoving my hands into my pockets.

Then I stopped.

“Well, are you coming?” I asked Krampus, were he was watching us, _me_ , go with narrowed eyes.

“ _Can’t_ ,” he hissed. “ _Bright_.”

I glanced around, blinking in the low light. It wasn’t _that_ bright, what was he--

Krampus growled, rolling his eyes. A bony, fur covered hand peeked from the gloom. “The Sun, you _twit_ , the _Sun_.”

He couldn’t stand the sun?

I filed the information away carefully, but still awkwardly waving him goodbye.

“Okay. _Er_ …heal up, yeah?”

And then I turned to go.

I never saw him looking thoughtfully at my back.

“ _Hmmmmm_ …” Krampus said lowly, as he watched me go.

Watched me go.


	12. almost

Sophia led me out of the park, cutting through the trees and around the well-beaten paths. I had to go at a fast trot, like a freaking horse, to keep up with her pace.

She peeked back at me every few minutes, her eyes wide in her pale face, to check if I was there? To see if she wasn’t alone?

I didn’t know.

Before I knew it, we were out of the park, and heading into Manhattan.

And not the Manhattan that everyone talked about, either. No, we went to the _real_ Manhattan, the place hidden by the glitzy face of skyscrapers and money, were the tourist buses avoided. We went to the place where the streetlights were dim and the alleyways glinted with broken glass and needle tips, were people still huddled around fire-pits, homeless and alone.

Night was only an hour away, and I made Sophia take my hand to lead me, just in case. I didn’t want to lose her in the certifiable labyrinth that was the City.

She acquiesced with a noisy sigh, and even though I had to almost run to keep up with her now, it was worth it to know where the hell we were going.

I kept track of the street signs in my head, repeating them over and over until I was sure I could repeat where we were going.

Just like I had memorized the path to the little girl in the park.

As we went further, the people slowly weeded away, until there were only a handful dotted, here or there in doorways and on street corners and then, there were none but us.

Oh, the sounds of traffic and the screaming of cab-drivers and the rushing of trains could still be heard, the life-breath of New York, but that didn’t matter.

We were, for all intentions, alone.

The buildings around us rose up, like silent sentinels to our path, their broken windows gaping like opened mouths. And it didn’t matter that it was still light out.

It was still creepy as hell.

And Sophia was getting panicky, I could tell, from the periodic, rapid squeezes of her hand to the jittering of her teeth, her breathy mumbling and the fast swivel of her head.

Side-side. Up-down-up-down. Side-side.

Out of breath, though I was warmer from all the rushing we had just done, my pants were still like ice around my calves and my toes were numb in my boots, my fingers frozen in Sophia.

I opened my mouth to ask if we were almost there when she pulled us to the side, into a wide alley, and pressed us into the shadows.

I blinked, suddenly in the darkness, and peered out around the dumpster right next to us.

Down the alley, there was an old truck parked next to one of the huge warehouses that lined this street, its rear-end pulled up near the old docking bay, with its rusty doors and long wooden slates, pox-marked with age.

There wasn’t anyone around.

I pulled back, and spoke lowly next to Sophia’s ear. Not whispering, because that would carry, but quiet and calm and _low_ , even as my stomach was cramping and my throat was tight with apprehension.

“Thank you, Sophia,” I said, pressing my cold lips to her feverish cheek.

I had a sudden flash of us, years before, hiding like this under our bed, telling stories and waiting in fear.

I didn’t like the parallels.

I leaned back and looked into her eyes, tried to give her a smile, even as I pushed her towards the mouth of the alley, back the way we came.

“Go back, Sophia, I’ll be okay from here.”

She frowned, a childish purse of her lips, but nodded slowly, shuffling her feet hesitantly before she crept backwards, out of the alley, and then spun, running away.

I watched her go, and then went to work.

I stood up out of my crouch, kinking my neck and cracking my knuckles nervously, and then walked carefully to the other side of the alley, then down, towards the truck and the docking bay. Just as carefully, I worked to dodge the broken bottles that lined the ground, to keep my steps light.

I breathed slowly and evenly, fighting the urge to hold my breath. It wouldn’t make me any quieter, and might even give me away.

My heart raced as I got closer to the truck, close enough to pull up my sleeve and press my arm to the hood of it, to check if it was still warm.

I didn’t use my hands or my cheek; I was too cold, and wouldn’t be able to tell.

It wasn’t warm. It had been here for a while.

Peeking around the front of the truck, back to the docking bay door, I went around when I didn’t see or hear anything, further down the alley, to the old fire escape that hung onto the brick wall, almost all the way to the ground.

I rubbed my hands and jumped with a silent prayer, the nearest run nearly a foot above my head. I pulled myself up, cursing as I did so, using my feet to grab the wall and help.

Panting, my breath fogging around my face, I climbed, tugging on each rung before I put my weight on it. The ladder was rusty and _old_ and I had no clue if it would actually hold me all the way to the roof, but I had to _try_. It creaked dangerously, and the rust was staining my hands like dried blood, but it _held_.

I didn’t look down as I went ten feet, twenty feet, _thirty_ feet off of the ground, clinging to the side of the building like a monkey.

I finally pulled myself, breathless, onto the roof, on my belly, the stone scratching my hands.

I didn’t feel it, flopping onto my back, taking deep breaths, blinking at how close the sky looked above me.

I sat up when I had my breath back, and looked around.

The roof was abandoned except for the huge triangles of bubbled, broken glass where the lined the middle of the roof. Skylights.

I crawled over, just to be careful, and looked over the edge.

And felt my heart stop.

Lying in the center of the fading spot of faint winter light was a _huge_ figure, pale and white and _hairy_.

And he was _massive_ , with huge shoulders and a thickly padded belly. A large beard covered the lower half of his face, as white as snow.

If he stood up, he would at least be seven foot tall, if not more.

Still, somewhere inside, a broken piece of my childhood was screaming, _Santa_! _Santa_! Excited and breathless and joyful.

Then, the anger came as I noticed that he was covered in what looked like a _harness_ , with blinders over his eyes. Like he was a _horse_. They had trussed him up like an _animal_.

 _Those sons of bitches_ , I spit mentally, they had freaking _kidnapped_ Santa Claus and then _tied_ _him_ _up_!

I tried to push it all aside, to look at what was going on rationally.

 _Okay, bullet point it, Mendoza_ , I told myself, biting my lips so hard I wondered if it was bleeding. I couldn’t feel it.

 _One_ :…Santa was lying on what looked like a huge wooden table, naked and tied up.

 _Two_ : There were three people that I could see, huge, football-player-esq people in flannel and blue-jeans. All men. All bearded.

They looked like freaking _lumberjacks_ , I thought, as I tried to get good looks at their faces. I couldn’t. I was too high up. They were moving around, setting out candles and lying down thick, even lines of salt.

Were they humans? They didn’t seem to be paying any mind to the fact that they were _surrounded_ by old iron struts, exposed beams.

None were paying attention to the slumbering faerie in-between them.

 _Three:_ How the _Hell_ was I going to get down there?

I crept backwards, and saw the stairwell door in the corner of my eye.

It was bolted shut.

I stood up and went to it, making sure I was out of the line of sight for the windows, and pulled out my knife. Then I paused and wiped my hands on my pants. My palms left huge swipes of ugly brown and red.

I picked up my knife again.

The lock was old, just as rustled as the ladder I had climbed up on, and I knelt down and slipped my knife into it, rattled it carefully.

I willed with everything that I had for it to open open _open_.

With a grinding, screeching _ker- **kunk**_ , it _clicked_ , practically falling to the ground as I rushed to catch it and set it aside. I shoved the knife into my pocket.

I stood up, wiped my hands again, and pulled the door open, gritting my teeth and _jerking_ _it_ when it was clear that it had probably rusted closed.

But maybe not completely.

It opened, just a crack, and I cleared out the path it would swing, pushing the trash away with my foot.

I shoved my shoulder into the opening and pushed with my back to open the door enough that I could slip through.

Then I stopped, half in the door, and rested my head against the jam.

I knocked it once, twice, gently, with my forehead, my breathing ragged and fast.

I blinked away tears, my hands shaking and cold as I angrily wiped my face.

 _What the hell was I_ doing, I wondered, as I stepped down into the dark stairwell, feeling with my hands on the wall as I descended, one rickety step at a time.

It was a miracle no one had heard me so far, and I prayed that my luck would hold and no one would.

I counted steps and breaths. One step, one breath.

Again and again, until the floor rose up under my foot and I almost tripped, blind in the dark.

I felt around with my hands, waving them carefully, until I felt a doorjamb.

Pausing, I pressed my ear to the crack, my eyes finally seeing that a faint slat of light was peeking through the opening. It was dim, muted.

How long had it taken, for me to get from the roof to here?

How much time did I have left?

From what I had seen, the door I was at was only about twenty feet away from the table, built into an alcove. If I opened the door, and kept to the wall, and the men were still around…around Santa Claus, then they wouldn’t be able to see me.

But that didn’t account for anyone else that might be there.

Shit.

I shook my lengths of chain out, and slipped them around my fists. Then, I gripped my knife, took a deep breath…

And froze as a loud banging filled the air. It was muffled through door, but still loud enough that my teeth clacked together and I wanted to cover my ears.

There were people talking. The three men? Another? Then footsteps, leading away from the middle area?

I didn’t know, but I used the noise to open the door wide enough that I could see out. There was no one around.

I didn’t have time for my eyes to adjust before I slipped out and into the open area, slowly.

The inside of the warehouse was warm, like they had a few heaters running, and I shivered at the heat as I crouched down behind a wide bench, looking around.

I heard the men more clearly now, near the front of the warehouse, talking to someone at the door.

My heart pounding, my hand tight around my knife, I took a shallow breath, all I could handle when it felt like I was going to throw up, and then _ran_ for the table, to the massive figure lying prone, curled on his side, hog-tied.

I kicked aside the lines of salt angrily with my foot, scattering it across the floor and knocked away some of the candles.

This close to him, all I felt was _cold_.

It didn’t matter that there were heaters running; I felt as though I had been dunked into a wet snow-bank, breathless with the shock of winter slipping into my clothes, cloying in my lungs like snakes of icy wind.

I made myself ignore it, and the figure, and slid my knife first through the rope binding his ankles to his wrists. The rope was as thick as two of my fingers, and I sawed at it quickly, glancing around me to see if anyone else was around.

My hands were dumb with cold as I _pulled_ , finally slicing through.

I laid my hand on the table to steady myself as a gust of _wind_ swelled around me, sweeping through my clothes like they were paper, freezing my lips and tongue and stabbing like needles into the moisture of my eyes.

I squinted my eyes shut, but kept working, sealing my lips closed. My lungs _burned_.

I hoped that whoever had banged on the door kept the three men busy. One, I might have been able to take. But three?

The harness was old leather, but was oiled; supple and warm against my fingers, hot enough to _burn_ , it felt like.

But that was probably the frostbite I was sporting.

The buckles were iron, hammered and worn, and I tasted acid to think that they had rested against faerie skin.

Iron was deadly for the fae, the older ones even more-so.

I checked that this one, this faerie, was still breathing before I started again. He was, and his breath was the cold of a winter wind.

The harness was strapped around his wide chest, up to his face, pushed into his mouth, and down his arms and legs.

There were so many buckles, I didn’t know where to start.

I tired not to panic, to find the best place to cut, but then it was too late.

There was a shout over my head, the rumble of feet on stairs, and my head jerked up to see a woman running down the flight of stairs in the far corner where I hadn’t seen, coming from an open, second-story office door.

My breath left me in a wheeze, and I hurriedly turned back to the prone King of Winter, and didn’t even have enough time to think to worry about the fact that my knife was steel. I slid it between skin and leather and _pulled_.

It sliced through the leather like butter.

Thank Christ.

Panicking as I heard the footsteps come closer, the pounding of multiple sets of boots, ( _shit_ , the _men_ ), I hit all the spots I could, all the places that looked vital--the joints along the shoulders, hips, elbows, the middle of the chest.

Each cut loosened the whole of the apparatus, each cut sent another pulse of pure _ice_ through the warehouse, all coming from the sleeping faerie. I couldn’t even feel my face, I was so numb, and my chains had slid from my hands so that I could better grab and pull the leather away from white, hairy skin; so that I could keep a hold on my knife.

I was so cold.

I heard a shouted word, indistinct over the roaring in my ears, and dropped to the floor as a wave of power, warm and smelling of cinnamon, flew over my head. On hands and knees, I frantically crawled as fast as I could under the table, over the floor, to the side opposite of where the spell _?_ had flown.

I came up, and threw myself on the table, my hands reaching for the blinders, and yelped to find them colder than anything I had ever felt, pulsing with malcontent.

Malevolence.

They were so cold they _burned_ , and suddenly, every dark memory I had was swirling around my eyes, drowning me in blood and fear and _pain_ , suffocating and wet. Screaming screaming _screaming._

I grit my teeth, trying to drag them off, when someone tackled me from the side.

I went flying to the ground, feet away, huge arms crushing my chest. I tasted blood as my head smacked the concrete, but clawed at a blurry face through the reflexive tears.

I think I was screaming, but wasn’t sure. My ears were ringing. My knife was gone.

Crushed under a huge bulk of hot body, I kicked and threw every knee and elbow that I had into the soft spots I could feel.

There was grunting, but then my cheek was crushed into the ground, and I was held down with countless hands, my arms twisted up around my back as I was forced onto my stomach and _sat_ on.

I was gasping when most of the weight pulled away, but I couldn’t move in the neat hold.

I still thrashed, feeling the bruises bloom on my arms and hips as I rocked around.

A hand clapped over my mouth.

Had I still been screaming?

I didn’t know. But the hand was hot and heavy and tasted like blood as I bit down into a fleshy palm.

There was a curse, as the rushing in my ears slowed down, before a piece of cloth was shoved into my mouth, gagging me. I tried to spit it out, but what felt like a belt was wrapped around my head, wide and biting into my cheeks. It was chinked behind my head.

I choked on it, as I was pulled to my feet by my upper arms.

I sagged in the hold, suddenly dizzy, breathless, and was _shook_.

My brains rattled around in my skull.

When my eyes cleared, two of the men were rushing around Santa Claus, trying to tape the harness back together. The other was holding me before a woman, just as wide as the others, just as tall, in flannel and denim, her hair cut around her jaw.

She was scowling, and my chin was in her huge hand. Her lips were moving, but my eyes were stuck on the knife at her belt.

It was huge, and it’s blade gleamed like oil; black and sickly and gross, and I knew, just _knew_ , that whatever the blinders were, they were akin to this knife.

I could barely feel my body as I hung, but my ears were slowly clearing.

I felt something burning, running down my neck.

“--re you? Well?” she smacked my cheek, and it felt like she was pushing broken glass into my skin.

I half screamed, jerking away from her, but meeting her eyes.

I bared my teeth at her, and she squeezed my jaw sharply.

I was gasping, breathless.

“Un-gag her,” she ordered to the man behind me, and I felt as the belt was loosened, then undone. It fell around my collar like a too-large necklace, and I spit the wadded cloth out.

It hit the ground, saliva soaked and bloody. It looked like a handkerchief.

I ran my tongue over my teeth gingerly, but was silent.

“Well? _Who_ _are_ _you_?” the woman asked me again, her hand going back to my jaw to raise my face to hers.

She was suddenly so close that I could see every pore on her nose, our eyes locked. She had freckles, and a light scar over her left eyebrow.

Her eyes were blue. A bright, cornflower blue.

And inside?

There was nobody home in there.

And I was so, _so_ screwed. 


	13. the ice man wakes

I opened my mouth to tell her to _fuck_ _off_ , rage burning through my veins, when _Sophia_ jumped on her back, screaming.

I didn’t have time to be surprised. Instead, I took the opportunity to _ram_ my head back and _up_.

I felt cartilage crunch, a nose, and stomped an instep, shoving my elbow back into a crotch as the hold on my arms loosened to the point were I could jerk away.

The man felt to the floor like an anvil, and I kicked him in the head as hard as I could before I scrambled for the woman.

More specifically, for the knife at her belt.

Sophia was still riding her back like a monkey, her hair flying around them as that woman clawed at her, trying to unseat her.

Sophia was screaming indistinctly, her hands ripping at the woman’s hair, trying to scalp her. Her long legs were wrapped around a waist, and she and the woman were weaving drunkenly.

I tackled them both, fumbling for the knife even as we tilted, _tilted_...

We all fell to the ground with a crash and a chorus of cursing and screams, and I felt it as the knife split my hand before I could properly grab it.

But then it was in my hand, sticky and sick and ugly, and I _threw_ it as far away as I could.

Sophia was slamming the woman’s head against the ground when I drug myself away, and the woman was trying to protect her face.

The other two men were rushing towards us, where we lay, and I dizzily got to my knees, then my feet as they reached us.

Words bubbled from their lips, that familiar cinnamon and warmth, and I saw as it hit Sophia.

She went lax, and at first I thought she was dead, before I noticed her shoulders rising and falling.

Asleep.

 _What the hell_ were _these bad-guys_ , I thought as one of the men checked Sophia’s pupils and the other helped the woman up.

But then I didn’t have time for _anything_.

Scrambling, half-tripping, I made it back to the table to the yelling at my back.

The harness was still split, still broken, and I was half on top of the table, yanking the blinders up and off, the bit falling away with them, and my bloody hands had dripped onto Santa’s face, utterly sacrilegious, utterly horrifying, but then--

I had a bare instant to look into the darkest, _warmest_ eyes I had ever seen before _something_ hit my chest like a punch through my lungs; a hand of _winter_ smacking me away like a _bug_ \--

I was flying through the air, everything a fuzz around me, and all I could think was that, sooner or later, I was going to hit--

I slammed into the far wall of the warehouse and then everything was black.


	14. leaves lost

When consciousness came back, all I could think was, sad and small and pained, _oh my God, Santa Claus_ killed _me._

But nothing hurt. Was this really death?

Scared, I tried to turn my head, but couldn’t, and, carefully I tried blinking open my eyes.

Something warm was cradling my head, and me, like I was a child. And I wasn’t _cold_ anymore, though I couldn’t feel my body. It was…a strange feeling.

My eyes were crusted shut, and then something warm and wet was wiping at them, gently moving over the creases of the thin skin. I tried to open my eyes again, after it pulled away, and could.

Grateful, I couldn’t stop the tears from welling when I saw the familiar roof of the warehouse over my head. Well, kind of familiar.

It was iced over, long stalactites of frozen water hanging down, thousands of crystal-clear, beautiful spindles. Around us was snow-covered, dips and hills formed against the wall and coating the ground, as though the snow had just…blown in through the door.

I caught my breath as a huge face bent over mine, far above me. Tall and rugged and wide.

 _Oh my God, I was in Santa’s lap_ , I realized as I pieced together the long white beard, the pale face, and…the sad, dark eyes?

Why was Santa sad?

I gingerly looked around from my spot, still unable to move.

We were sitting on the table where he had lain captive, but now the sky above us was dark, snow quietly falling in through the cracked and broken glass.

The men and the woman were nowhere to be seen.

Had I won?

 _How much time had I lost?_ I wondered vaguely, suddenly able to feel my fingers where they tangled in something soft. A blanket?

It was velvety and warm, and something furry brushed my cheek, whiskery.

Was Santa _naked_?

Somehow, the thought didn’t bother me, because something, a blanket or other, was under me and around me and Santa was holding me and I was _warm_.

I was so tired.

“Hello, child,” Santa said softly, drawing my attention back to him. His voice was as warm as a fire, and his cheeks were flushed rosy, but he didn’t sound joyous or bright. He had a deep voice, something that, should he laugh, one would think he could shake a _mountain_.

But he wasn’t using that voice now. Now…

He sounded pained and small.

He was looking at me, and still so sad, and I wanted to tell him that I was _fine_ , that he was _safe_ now, but couldn’t find the words.

I still couldn’t feel hardly anything, not my cheek or my new bruises or my toes.

What had happened?

But then Santa was speaking again.

“We must make haste, child, the Solstice is upon us, and Winter is in your debt,” he said softly, leaning down so close that I could clearly see his face. He paused. “ _I_ am in your debt.”

I swallowed dryly at how grave his voice was. How sad he sounded.

“But you are dying,” Santa said, with utter finality.

I felt my whole world crack apart, my breathing going shallow and fast.

 _No, I hadn’t hit my head that hard, I hadn’t! I was_ fine _!_

But Santa still looked so _sad_ …and I was _so_ numb…and, and…

And I could _see_ the gray in the corners of my eyes, an old, familiar phantom from a time I couldn’t remember, and I could _feel_ as my lungs struggled to inflate, could _feel_ as my heart struggled to beat.

I was _dying_.

I felt it as I began to cry, silently, tears welling up and then falling down my temples into my hair. Helplessly, my breath was choking, and I tightened my feeling-less fingers into the blanket as tightly as I could.

“I don’t--I don’t want to die. _Please_ ,” I begged weakly, struggling to breathe.

Santa just looked solemn.

“…You have saved my life, Margaret, and…should you wish it, _Winter_ can save yours.” His arms tightened around me. A frown pulled at his wide mouth.

“But there will be a price,” he whispered. “And death is nothing to fear.” He tried to comfort me, but I couldn’t…

I just _couldn’t_. I wanted to _live_ , I _needed_ to live.

Santa spoke again. “Choose carefully, for once I give this gift, nothing can take it back,” he warned me, and I could hear the power behind his words, the truth of what he was saying.

He could save me, but it would cost me something.

But everything worth _anything_ cost something.

And I was willing to pay _anything_.

Rasping, I coughed weakly around the liquid filling my mouth, welling from my lips.

Santa’s chest was dotted in red.

Blood. My blood.

“I…want…to live,” I told him, my voice faint as it floated from betwixt my lips, my tongue fumbling. Death was reaching for me with spindly fingers, digging into my chest and _pulling_.

Santa stared at me, the weight of the world, of _winter_ , in his dark gaze. Then he nodded, a slow ducking of his head, and the deal was struck.

Reaching down beside him, I watched as he scooped up a palm-full of snow into his giant hand.

He made a fist, and when his hand opened, resting in the center of his palm, was a perfectly formed heart; tiny in the cage of his huge fingers, his thick hand. It glistened white, marbled snow with veins of clear ice snaking around it, through it. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

With his other hand, he gently pulled away the blanket covering me, still cradling my lax head in the corner of his arm. With a finger, I felt it as he drew a line down my sweater.

It split open like tissue paper, taking my shirt, my bra, with it, leaving me bare-chested in Santa’s lap.

He brought the heart to his mouth and blew a breath over it, a whisper of a wind that sounded like bells and the coming of winter.

And the snow-heart started to beat.

Then, slowly, he placed the pulsing heart onto my chest. He covered it with his hand, and it was so small, so pale against my skin, and he _pushed_.

I arched up, screaming, as the ice sliced into my skin, through my ribs, clawing at the soft, hot part of me and shredding it like it was nothing.

Snow pumped through my veins, through ever artery, _freezing_ as it went, icing over my lungs, my stomach, crystallizing my every _bone_ , my every pore filling with _frost_.

And I was lost to Winter.


	15. new frost

It _hurt_ , it hurt more than anything I had ever felt before.

It was _killing_ me, only to bring me back, formed anew from the hoarfrost and snow, a sculpture of agonizing cold and wintry perfection.

I wasn’t screaming--my throat had frozen shut, my eyes icing over, the tears freezing on my face and then tinkling like glass as they fell. My clothes froze froze _froze_ , until they were as fragile as paper, and I didn’t feel it when they _cracked_ and broke away, crumbling to specks of cloth and stiff needles of thread.

After an eternity, locked in the throes of a heart of _Winter_ in a body of earth, it was over.

Blessedly _over_.

And I was gasping, retching icy water over a leg, my hair doted with crystal as it fell stiffly around my face. I was turned, but still held as I was placed onto a soft, crumbly pillow, deliciously cool under my hands and against my aching skin, crunching between my toes and twining around my ankles.

I collapsed onto my stomach, onto the soft bed, left breathless and panting, my new heart hammering away, then slowing, my blood like cold molasses as it slunk through my veins, my limbs.

The hands, those huge hands, were clasped against my hips, still holding me.

I turned my head so I could breathe, and there was Santa Claus, smiling down at me.

Helplessly, I smiled back, weak and happy and--

Wait, what had just _happened_?

Santa let me go, and I pushed myself up on hands and knees.

I blinked to see that I was lying in a pile of snow, naked as the day I was born, my skin starkly contrasting with the pile of clean, pure white.

I held up my hand. It was still brown, but…smoother now, and the veins were a deep, glowing blue, almost like they were filled with water instead of blood.

I blinked, and when the memories came, they were… _cloudy.._.almost like I was looking at them through a frosted window.

They were still there, but I didn’t feel the pain, or the fear quite as sharply as I had before.

It was like…I was as cold as ice.

Which, glancing at the pile of snow that felt as comfortable against my skin as a soft sweater…I guessed that I was.

I was as cold as the snow itself.


	16. onward

All I wanted to do was sit back and lay in the snow. The urge was almost overwhelming; I could imagine how crisp it would feel, how comforting, as the cool powder covered one limb after another until it swallowed over my head like a sheet, only a thousand times _better_.

But Santa was pulling me up by my hand, lifting me like I weighted as much as a feather, and the snow, where it had settled on my hair, over my shoulders, wasn’t melting.

It was a comfort, even as the King of Winter dropped a large, green velvet robe over my shoulders.

It was a huge weight, lined along the edges with thick white fur, and it was the ‘blanket’ that I had been wrapped in before.

Santa laughed as I half-stumbled, pulling the sleeves up so that I could tie the belt around the middle. It was as soft as a dream, as snow.

I chinked it as tightly as I could, but it was _enormous_ , gaping around my shoulders, pooling around my feet.

And it was a nice laugh, loud and booming and _kind_. He wasn’t laughing at me, but with me, and I smiled at him, glad that he was smiling at me.

I didn’t see my clothes.

It was then, looking around for my boots, my pants, anything to pull on under the enormous robe, when I saw that we weren’t alone.

Behind him, Krampus, almost as tall as Santa but no where _near_ as wide, was holding out another robe, dressing his king with a bowed, reverent head. Santa swept into it, allowing Krampus to tie the belt and help him into a set of soft boots.

Krampus was tall, with spindly, corded arms and bent, crooked legs, like a goat. His hands were huge, extra knuckles, and tipped in curling nails that looked as sharp as razorblades. He was hairier than Santa, with dark russet fur covering him from head to hooves, over tail and chest and crooked back. His basket sat on the floor beside him, wrapped in chains, and he pulled it back over his shoulders.

Santa clapped him on the shoulder, and they shared a familiar, almost fond look.

Beside Krampus, off to the side, there was a tall man with a rich velvet poet’s shirt and cap, tight leather breeches, and knee-high boots with low heels.

He had high cheekbones and an aristocratic nose and his skin was as black as coal, as though he had been rolling in soot, and it had stained his clothes in spotty, blurring patches. His grinning mouth was wet and as red as blood, his teeth sharp, pointed white where he smirked at me. In one hand, he twirled a thin cane, flipping it around his knuckles, tapping it in the snow once, twice, again and again.

 _Black Pete_ , my mind provided, spinning around and around. My hands clenched in the fur collar, tight.

My bare toes curled in the snow where I stood.

Then my eyes spotted Sophia, huddled in the corner, and I felt my breath leave me.

I didn’t think as I rushed to her, the robe dragging behind me, baring my legs as I ran.

“Sophia? Sophia!” I gasped, reaching out to pull her into a hug.

I stopped when she screamed, a high, animal noise of fear and pain.

My hands hung in the air between us, my knees on the ground.

She rocked back and forth, and I could hear her crying.

“Sophia?” I asked carefully, keeping my voice gentle and low.

She didn’t seem to have heard me.

“Sophia?” I asked again, a bit louder.

My stomach was dropping, inch by inch, as she continued to shake and rock, crying brokenly.

Then I heard what she was saying.

“Not real, not real, she’s not real, Maggie, Maggie why? Where did you go? Maggie? No. She’s not real, not real, not real--”

she was mumbling between breathy sobs.

And I…felt _sad_.

I felt really, _really_ sad, but not…not anything I couldn’t deal with.

And then I was _scared_.

Why wasn’t I _heartbroken_ to see Sophia like this? I _loved_ her, I loved her like a _sister_ , and this, this _should_ have sent me grasping her to my chest, trying to soothe her.

But I didn’t feel like that. I just felt…cold and sad.

And that was it.

I wanted to hold her, to calm her, but it wasn’t the burning need that I was so familiar with, the frantic, urgent push to hug her to me and to sing to her.

But I didn’t, _couldn’t_ , because every time I got even an inch closer, she cried harder.

“Sophia,” I whispered, sad.

Then she was up, shoving me away, scrambling to her feet and running, sprinting away, out of the warehouse, racing down the steps, out into the street, and then she was…just… _gone_ …vanishing into the night.

I looked after her, shocked and frozen where I sat.

“ _Sophia_ ,” I murmured, staring after her as a heavy hand landed on my shoulder.

There was Santa Claus, standing over me. He had a quiet, kind look on his face.

I swallowed thickly, and got to my feet, the sleeves of my robe dragging the ground as I got up. Santa pulled me under his arm, holding me to his warm side.

It felt good, and I let him lead me, sightless and shocked, towards the docking bay door.

Where the truck had been, there was now a massive sleigh. It had three bench-seats, one stacked atop the next. The wood was _beautiful_ , glossy and warm, and the sides were carved with pictures of _trees_ and _mountains_ and _forests_ and _lakes_ , animals hidden here or there.

It was stunning under the moonlight.

At the front, two reindeer were hooked to it, bells jingling on their embroidered harnesses. Their horns arched over their heads, fuzzy ears swiveling too and fro. Their breaths fogged the air before their muzzles.

If it was cold, I didn’t feel it. It felt comfortably cool outside, like a nice spring breeze over the skin of my face and throat.

I took a deep, brisk breath of night air.

There were, what looked like, four spaces behind the two reindeer, as though they were the leading pair.

A man in a thick, brown-fur cloak, his shoulders covered in moss, his dark beard matted with sticks and dirt, was leading another four reindeer from down the alley, already harnessed. They passed close enough to touch as he led them to the sleigh and hooked them together, two on each side.

They pawed the ground as they got settled, as the man tossed the reins over their shoulders, all the way back to the first bench of the sleigh.

Farmhand Rupert?

Santa greeted him warmly, with a smile and a belly laugh. Rupert ducked his head, accepting his lord’s welcome, offering him the reigns.

Santa took them, and, letting me go, stepped over the lip and onto the giant sleigh. He pulled on a pair of leather, fur-rimmed mittens, and gave me his hand, like I was a lady he was helping over a muddy puddle.

Flushed under his and the others’ eyes, I pulled up the bottom length of robe over my arm and took his gloved hand. I stepped lightly onto the sleigh, and it felt _right_.

Utterly, perfectly _right_.

The wood was smooth against the soles of my feet, dusted lightly with snow.

“Lads,” Santa said grandly, one of his hands coming to rest on my head, his mittened palm bigger than my face as he petted back my hair where it fell around my shoulders. My hair was still stiff with frost, glittering where I could see it from the side of my eye. It fell in a thick, dark blanket.

I hadn’t noticed that it had come out of its tie.

I wasn’t noticing a lot, it felt like.

“My I introduce the Lady of the First Snow,” he said, his voice rumbling in his chest, right next to my cheek.

Wait, what?

He meant me?

Black Pete’s eyes were wide, the whites startling against the shadow of his skin. His smile grew when he saw my gaze and he gave a short, graceful bow.

Krampus gave a growling, hissing sound, his shoulders rising sharply, and I think it was a laugh, as he folded his arms over his muscular chest.

Farmhand Rupert merely nodded, a shallow dip of his shaggy head. His eyes were dark and shadowed by the brim of his hood.

Santa sat, gently pulling me with him, and the others piled on behind us, Krampus and his basket on the top bench and the other two on the middle.

Santa snapped the reins, and then…

Then we were _flying_.


	17. the beginning

Laughing, I tipped my head back in the rush of the cold wind. It swept back my hair, and I threw my arms wide, enjoying the feeling as it blew across my skin like a kiss, like a million butterfly wings tangling along my flesh.

It was _amazing_.

And pressed against Santa’s side, I didn’t worry about falling off, even though we were miles above the ground. He had obviously been driving this sleigh for a very, _very_ long time, and even with the new mounts pulling it along, he handled it easily, effortlessly graceful for all of his size.

My stomach was in my throat as we dipped through clouds and rode the air like spirits. But it was a good feeling, like riding a rollercoaster at Coney Island, a sickening, teeth-numbing whirl of endorphins and unfettered _enjoyment_.

My heart beat fast, my body comfortably cool for all the frost gathering along my eyelashes, tipping the collar of my robe in white as the cold lashed against the fur.

I breathed deeply, my hands clasped around the front bar of the sleigh, beside the loop where the reigns fed through to Santa’s hands.

When I peeked my eyes open, glancing towards the ground, New York was a ghostly parody of itself, its normally bright lights a dim, featureless grey.

I skimmed my hand along the air, letting it pull back my sleeve. My fingers drew pictures through the clouds, and I was utterly inhuman in that moment of joy and excitement that I could hardly understand it, or myself.

It was frightening, but I wasn’t afraid.

Why _would_ I be, with the King of Winter at my side, his laugh booming in my ears?

It was a perfect night, the best one I had ever had.

I wasn’t worried about _anything_ , and was completely free to just _feel_ ; the wood beneath my hands and feet, the velvety softness of my robe, the comfortable bite of fresh snow and the hoarfrost that rimmed my face and hair.

I peeked back behind me, a giggle bubbling from between my lips.

The sleigh had left ripples in the air, glittering designs painting through the sky.

Krampus and Black Pete were smiling, if you would call it that, baring their teeth more like, really, and their teeth were as sharp as knives. Farmhand Rupert’s face was hidden, his eyes only gleams in the shadows of his hood, but they look to be smiling, too.

At me?

I didn’t care.

For the first time in my life, I was free.

And freedom was _Winter_.

**Author's Note:**

> Disregards the canon in 'Ghost Story' and beyond.


End file.
